Pushing Daisies
by firsttimefan
Summary: Post ep for 6.14. What if Kate didn't have to plan this wedding without her mother? "Once I touch someone, they live again. Heart starts beating and everything runs as it biologically should." She's been gone for over ten years, but Rick could bring Johanna back - see if she really would love him.


**Here's a little idea I got from watching ****_Pushing Daisies_****. Chuck brought her Dad back, so why not Kate?**

* * *

Castle?" she calls out.

This was just too odd- even for him. Sitting on the kitchen bench was a chicken. A dead chicken still in all its feathers. From the way its feet were bound together and it looks more than a little shrivelled she could only guess at Chinatown. She knew he loved to trawl the smoky, almost alien boutiques – loved to pick everything up and play with it; the first time he had dragged her 'exploring' she had been privately amazed at how many things she could only speculate at already were familiar to him.

Now she was just worried that she was going to have to watch him pluck and behead the poor bird before she ate it. It would be messy and smelly.

"Castle!"

She gives the bird one last glance then picked her jacket up off the back of the sofa and started to head through to the office but he exited through the door before she could reach it.

"You're home," he observes dully.

"Yeah," she gives him a quick peck and slipped past into the bedroom to hang it up. "We didn't get a call today. It's a good thing you stayed home to write – not that you've gotten much of that done I see."

"Huh?" he sounds startled that she's turned the conversation over to him and she can see he wasn't really following what she was saying, just watching her move from the doorway. It wasn't the hungry look she got often when they had been apart all day, or the content one where he seemed to revel in domesticity and inquire after her day and watch her getting home routine. This was something different.

"Writing," she prompts with a slight frown. She drops the jacket to the bed and comes to stand in front of him, wrapping her arms around his hips and waiting for the distracted fog to clear from his eyes. He almost sounds half asleep.

"I wasn't writing."

"So I see," she gives him an encouraging smile. "China town, right? You get bored today, Castle?"

That gets his attention. "The chicken."

"Yeah the chicken. What on earth possessed you to buy a whole chicken?"

He's fully back with her now, whatever his preoccupation was is gone and the signals shooting off him are burning her. "We need to talk."

"About the chicken?" she asks weakly, falling back on joking to disguise she's suddenly nervous enough for her hands to feel clammy. He has a way of doing this to her; completely upending her emotions and dancing on them. Her mother's case, the proposal, the DC apartment, his father.

He nods and steps away from her arms. The cold makes her shiver and he catches it – of course he does. He takes her hand in his and leads her back through the apartment and though she missed his arms, she can't help but want him to let go of her hand, let her run from this conversation.

"Castle-"

He squeezes her hand and she stops. "You once asked me where my fascination where the macabre came from," he says, directing her to sit. He's watching her like she's skittish, or poisonous. Like he's afraid of her and it kicks her nerves up another level.

She wets her lips. Forcing words out a tight throat. "Summer in the Hamptons. Body on the beach."

"Yeah. It's more true than I let on."

She freezes. "You killed someone?"

He takes her other hand swiftly. "No! God, no." She can breathe again. "Have you…did you ever watch that TV series a few years back? _Pushing Daisies_?"

"Are you kidding me right now?"

"Did you watch it?" he's so intent on her face.

"Maybe once or twice," she shakes her head, trying to think because he's looking at her like this is _important_. "Something about pie? A girl came back to life?"

He nods slowly. "Do you remember how she came back to life?"

She shakes her head, swallowing. "Castle, what is going on?"

"The pie maker," he stares at her like he's trying to hypnotise her. Like if he can concentrate hard enough he can transfer everything he knows to her mind. "He has a…talent. He touches dead things. He touches them and they come back to life."

"They come back to life," she repeats at a loss what else she's supposed to do, what she's supposed to think right now.

"Rotten fruit, people." He gives her a second. "Animals."

Her head turns to the chicken on its own accord.

"I may have had a few too many scotches one night after a convention," he says slowly, a confession. "And I may have been discussing a hypothetical character who could touch dead people back to life. This show started not long after."

He lets her go and backs away. Away into the kitchen and she can't stop shaking her head, struggling for anything. It's a joke. He's just telling her that he came up with the idea and someone stole it. But his hand is hovering above the chicken now and it's hard enough to force herself to breathe.

It has to be a joke. Maybe this chicken isn't dead and he'll laugh for years about the look on her face right now. His finger is millimetres away from the beak and she just wants to tell him to stop.

She hears when it taps the dull orange beak and both she and Castle jump when the head jerks. It squirms, completely lost and uncomprehending. All its fathers mantle, fluffing up like a cat before it's wings snap out and begin thundering against the granite. Each contact drives the heaving body up, but it can't get to its feet which are still tied under it.

Castle steps back in. One touch to a flailing wing and it drops boneless back onto the bench.

She thinks the silence in the loft is going to swallow her whole.

Kate approaches the bird, unable to look at him but drawn on because she needs proof. This can't be real. There is no such thing as magic. She taps at the bird's breast then again at its beak but it remains lifeless. She looks up at Castle desperately but he's not laughing. The bird is cold under her, not even faintly warm. No sign it was _alive_ less than a minute ago.

"First touch life, second touch dead forever. Again."

"Castle," she pleads. He's dismantling her world right now. Just let it be over.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

"How long?" she chokes.

"I honestly don't know. But as long ago as that day on the beach."

She steps towards him but he matches her with a step back. He looks heartbroken and afraid and she knows then that she's crying. Crying for him and for her and for the black and white world she still wanted to live in. She might even be crying for that stupid chicken.

"Castle," she keens.

He sounds like he's ready to shatter. "You don't…you don't have to stay."

She pushes aside his warding arm and throws her arms around his neck, burying her head against his neck. As soon as she feels his arms trap her there she lets herself fall.

* * *

Hours later she still doesn't know if she cried till she passed out or if she just went into shock, but she's wedged in between him and the back of the couch now. She must have slept at some point because the chicken is gone from the bench now. One look at him and she won't let herself try and convince them it was a trick, that it was a dream.

"How many people know?" Her voice is a rusty nail in the gravity of the loft.

He moves under her, his chest sucking in a breath. She watches a hand snake towards her hair and then freeze, so she catches at it and brings it to her mouth. She never wants him to be scared of her. Especially if he's going to be the father of her three children. Because that was possible too right? She didn't know what was possible and what wasn't anymore.

His face ripples and she sees his careful expression crack. His breath stutters and he looks so grateful, so damn grateful she presses another kiss to his hand. "Uh," he blinks. "No one."

"No one?"

He shakes his head.

"Alexis?"

"No," he whispers.

"Martha?"

"I don't think so. She's never said anything, never mentioned nay accidents as a child."

"But you told me," she can't believe it.

"Thought I was going to throw up," he whispers.

"Why?"

"Because I was afraid."

She wriggles closer until she's certain any closer and she'd have to go crossed eyed to look at him. "I don't want you to be afraid," she tells him, appalled. But then, isn't she still terrified of him? What would happen if he left? If something happened to him? "But I meant why did you tell me?"

"Because you're my partner." He shrugs. "Because I love you."

"Thank you," she replies. "For trusting me. For loving me and letting me know I'm not in this alone."

"You're not," he breathes.

"You know, I love you so much it scares me," she confesses. "And we never talk about it, so I thought you should know. And nothing is going to change that."

He bundles her in against him, arms too tight and she's never been one to enjoy intense embraces and claustrophobic nature of them, she doesn't want to let go. He turned her view of the world on its head tonight but at least here she feels like some things are just the same.

"Castle?" she asks when his arms grow loose and her knuckles ache from her own grip.

"Hmm?" he sounds sleepy and she can feel the exhaustion tugging at her as well, urging her to sleep this day off and try and muddle through the consequences tomorrow.

But her mind is chewing over one thing. "Why did you tell me this now?"

He tenses again and she squeezes her eyes shut. She should have taken the sleep. Already she know she isn't going to want to know the answer.

"Something you said last night," he tells her.

"About getting married?"

"No. Well, yes – I wanted to tell you before we got married. But I was thinking about your mother."

The word escapes her like she's been sucker punched. "Mom."

He lets her go. "You're going to hate me."

"You want to touch her," she realises.

"I'd do anything for you, Kate. Including nothing if that's what you want."

She pushes herself up and looks down at him. "You're serious."

"Once I touch someone, they live again. Heart starts beating and everything runs as it biologically should."

"She's been gone for over ten years."

"I know," he apologises and she knows he's not just apologizing for thinking of the idea. He's sorry for the years she's spent without her mother. For the wedding plans she's going to make without her mother there.

But that's exactly what he's saying, isn't it? That it doesn't have to be that way?

He sees her hesitate. "She was embalmed, had a good casket. If I touch her, she'll heal. Tissue will regenerate."

"Maybe if she'd only been gone a year," she chokes, hating to think of her mother as anything than the beautiful woman she was. She was not some decomposing body in a box.

"No, Kate. I've checked. That chicken – it's been dead months without proper embalming and it was fine. Between preservation and this ability…she'd be fine. Plastic surgery can fix anything that's not and can make her look different enough that she'd be safe from Bracken."

She stands, hand over her mouth, trying not to cry. "Don't promise me that. Please Castle. I can't hope."

"But you want to." He steps over to her and holds her still. "Even if I'm wrong, you can still say goodbye. You'd have one minute to tell her all the things you wanted."

She sobs.

"I could meet your Mom," he tells her. "Probably give myself a hernia trying to think of a way to impress her in less than 60 seconds."

If anything she sobs louder, half sadness and half laughter.

"Just think about it," he whispers.

* * *

**What do you think? For those who have watched pushing daisies, you can't say you've haven't thought about this...and for those who haven't watched it, you should. It's quirky. And it has another crime fighting duo...trio? **

**May add to it later if I have time. I already have one story on the go where Johanna is alive.**


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